Ted Haggard: Marriage equality should be legal

'Though we would oppose that in our churches, it should be allowed by the state'

Published: 10/21/2012 at 2:22 AM

(Gayapolis) Ted Haggard, the disgraced-then-revived evangelical Colorado pastor notorious for a 2006 drug and gay sex scandal that saw him booted from the pulpit of the 14,000-member church he helped found, now believes the state should legalize same-sex marriage.

That’s what Haggard argued in an online debate Monday with Rabbi Benjamin Hecht, director of Orthodox Jewish think tank Nishma. The pastor, who in 2011 started a small, inclusive church in the basement of his Colorado Springs home, made a nuanced yet affirmative argument responding to the debate prompt, “Should same-sex marriage be allowed by the state?”